Everything started with the site. The year was 2020, and Megan and Dan Nelson were looking for a place where they could get away from the busyness of Boston. Maine’s midcoast region seemed like the perfect distance: far, but not too far. “It was a reaction to the pandemic; we started thinking about what life would look like going forward,” recalls Dan. Although they had looked at a few pieces of land inland, nothing had struck them as quite right.

But when they walked down the access road and onto the nine-acre plot on Westport Island, they knew. “We sat down on rocks among the ferns and grasses, listened to the birds, and smelled the ocean,” says Megan. “Unlike at other sites we had visited, it felt really peaceful. It was lovely.” It was, she adds, “very Maine.” 

Designing Around Nature

At the time, the site was raw—just woods and water, with views of both the Sheepscot River and the tidal cove. But as Dan points out, it “had a natural focal point because of how the topography works.” The couple knew they wanted to work with the team at Woodhull; they had researched the company’s projects and thought their contemporary style would be a good fit. “They brought to the project this incredible piece of land,” says architect David Duncan Morris. “They wanted us to help relate the building as specifically to the site as possible.”

But this plot wasn’t “your typical waterfront site with expansive viewsheds,” notes Morris. Instead, it had “prescribed, narrow views into the long distance and short, immediate views into a tidal cove, which turns the most amazing milky green jadeite color when it’s filled with water.” To frame these scenes, Morris would need to design outside the box. “We didn’t want to struggle against the topography. It was about connecting to it,” Dan says. “We didn’t want to impose our will on the site.” 

Landscaping with Intention

In response to the rise and fall of the land, Morris created a hinged floor plan, a wide V-shaped house with windows that have “equal, but very different” views. “Some rooms face into the woods, some have views that are largely up, some have views that look down. It’s a completely dynamic house in the fact that no room, no space or hallway has the same view as another,” Morris says. “It’s a magical experience.” To enhance that magic, the couple worked early on with landscape designer Soren deNiord.

“We were there right from the get-go to study the layout of the buildings and figure out how to traverse the slope,” deNiord says. He brought in stone terraces and created a stepping sequence that was intended to “play off the architectural gestures of the landscape.” It was also important to the whole team that they heal the land from the disturbances introduced during the building process.

“We used native sods, like fern, moss, and blueberry, to pull the woods back in and around the building,” says deNiord, who employed a palette of native plants to create seasonal gardens that would add interest year-round. (Winter plantings include winterberry, holly, and red twig dogwood, while a spring garden features mountain laurel, azaleas, clethra, and a variety of bulbs.) Hardscape elements include boulders found on-site, and repurposed as “sculptural objects and focal points.” DeNiord continues, “It all really unifies. That, to me, was the win. There’s a seamless transition between building and landscape.”

A Limited, Thoughtful Materials Palette

The sense of cohesiveness continues into the interior of the home, where a limited number of materials combine to create a living space that’s more than the sum of its parts. Morris learned early in the design process that his clients were interested in Japanese, Scandinavian, and midcentury modern styles. “That didn’t mean we wanted to replicate one of those. We wanted to take what we could learn from it,” he says. “We brought in paneling and texture that would evoke the simple, tailored, refined design you’d find in those midcentury case study houses.” Walnut became the wood of choice, which they treated in a variety of ways, from clear coats to ebonized.

Crafting the Walnut Slats

The distinguishing feature of the home is the repeated motif of vertically oriented walnut slats (a design element inspired in part by the “vertical language” of the trees around the house, reveals Morris). “That project is a few years old now, and we still talk about how long it took to make all the slats,” says Woodhull’s director of millwork, Scott Stuart. “They look ubiquitous in the project, but they’re very labor-intensive.”

Not only were these slats a mathematical problem—every functional component of the walls had to be divisible by three-and-an-eighth to ensure the slats would match perfectly—but they were also a technical one. “If you were to saw into it on a cross-section, each slat would look like a T,” Stuart explains. “They are three inches long at the back. The face of it is an inch and a half.”

It would have been easier to create the same patterns from two different pieces of wood, but Morris and Stuart both wanted the slats to “read as one piece of wood,” says Stuart. “It is a prominent part of the house. It appears in the kitchen and all their bedrooms. We chose one element and one method of fabrication. It’s a very humble piece of wood, but it holds the whole project together, in my mind.” 

Curves, Color, and Kitchen Design

Two additional woodworking challenges can be found in the kitchen, where Morris had designed an elliptical-shaped volume to mark the transition between kitchen and pantry. Made with multiple laminations of bent Italian poplar, the curved lines of the nine-foot-tall element bulge pleasingly into the open living space. “Another challenge was the color of that kitchen,” says Stuart.

While most of the project uses natural-toned wood, the cabinets are stained with a custom-brewed warm ebony hue. “Black is often very cool in color, but we wanted to make sure that we didn’t change the warmth of the walnut,” Stuart says. Like the slat wall, it was intended to feel “warm and comfortable, in a clean way.” 

The Subtle Details That Matter

From the decorative panels to the case-free walls, every inch of the coastal home was intended to be easy on the eyes. “We want to give a client something that isn’t obvious,” Stuart explains. “I want the clients to be sitting, maybe six months or two years later, and they’ve finally lived in the home, done enough laundry, cooked enough meals.

I want them to look over and see something they hadn’t seen before. And it’s just some small thoughtfulness.” He notes that much of their careful detailing “won’t show up in a photograph.” It’s just too subtle. “We were trying to break up anything that would feel flat,” adds Morris. There may not be many materials used in the space—just white oak flooring, granite countertops, a little slate, and a lot of walnut—but what they did include was treated with great care and precision. 

A Home That Feels Complete

As for the homeowners, they’re happy with how their restrained, midcentury-inspired home turned out. “It’s a house that makes a lot of sense,” says Megan. “It’s very peaceful and calming, but we also found that we can be pretty creative and productive up here.” “The house,” says Dan, “is a fully complete, realized, coherent thought.”